Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) F. Dijkstra

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) F. Dijkstra
Request for Comments: 6453 SARA
Category: Informational R. Hughes-Jones
ISSN: 2070-1721 DANTE
December 2011

A URN Namespace for the Open Grid Forum (OGF)

Abstract

This document describes a URN (Uniform Resource Name) namespace that
is engineered by the Open Grid Forum (OGF) for naming persistent
resources.

Status of This Memo

This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.

This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents
approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.

Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6453.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction ....................................................2
1.1. Requirements Language ......................................2
2. URN Specification for "ogf" Namespace ID (NID) ..................3
2.1. Namespace ID ...............................................3
2.2. Registration Information ...................................3
2.3. Declared Registrant of the Namespace .......................3
2.4. Declaration of Syntactic Structure .........................3
2.5. Relevant Ancillary Documentation ...........................4
2.6. Identifier Uniqueness Considerations .......................4
2.7. Identifier Persistence Considerations ......................4
2.8. Process of Identifier Assignment ...........................5
2.9. Process of Identifier Resolution ...........................5
2.10. Rules for Lexical Equivalence .............................5
2.11. Conformance with URN Syntax ...............................5
2.12. Validation Mechanism ......................................6
2.13. Scope .....................................................6
3. Examples (Informative) ..........................................6
4. Namespace Considerations ........................................6
5. Community Considerations ........................................7
6. Security Considerations .........................................7
7. IANA Considerations .............................................7
8. Acknowledgements ................................................7
9. References ......................................................8
9.1. Normative References .......................................8
9.2. Informative References .....................................8

1. Introduction

The Open Grid Forum (OGF) is a standardisation development
organisation in the field of distributed computing. The OGF produces
documents such as working drafts, specifications, and schemata. For
more information, see <http://www.ogf.org/>.

Working groups in the OGF community have expressed the need for
global, distributed, persistent identifiers in working drafts and
standards. Motivated by this need, the OGF would like to assign URNs
to some resources in order to retain unique, permanent, location-
independent names for them.

This namespace specification is for a formal namespace.

1.1. Requirements Language

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

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2. URN Specification for "ogf" Namespace ID (NID)

2.1. Namespace ID

"ogf" (where "ogf" is an acronym for "Open Grid Forum").

2.2. Registration Information

Registration Version Number: 1
Registration Date: December 2011

2.3. Declared Registrant of the Namespace

Technical Director
Open Grid Forum
P.O. Box 1738
Muncie, Indiana 47308
USA
http://www.ogf.org/
EMail: [email protected]

The position of Technical Director is currently fulfilled by Joel
Replogle.

2.4. Declaration of Syntactic Structure

The formal syntax definitions below are given in ABNF [RFC5234].

The namespace-specific string (NSS) in the urn:ogf names hierarchy
begins with a subnamespace identifier (SNID), followed by a delimiter
and a subnamespace-dependent string

OGF-URN = "urn:ogf:" SNID ":" SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING

where <SNID> is a unique subnamespace identifier for the
specification, and <SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING> is a unique
identifier within the subnamespace identifier scope.

<SNID> has the same syntax as a <NID> as defined in [RFC2141]:

SNID = ( ALPHA / DIGIT ) *31( ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" )

ALPHA and DIGIT are defined in Appendix B of [RFC5234].

The Technical Director at OGF (or their successors) assigns SNIDs.

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The syntax of <SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING> is dependent on the
<SNID> and MUST be defined by a Grid Forum Document [GFD.1]. This
document does not pose any additional restrictions to the
<SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING> other than what is defined in the NSS
syntax as defined by [RFC2141] or its successor:

SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING = 1*<URN chars>

<URN chars> is defined in Section 2.2 of [RFC2141].

2.5. Relevant Ancillary Documentation

The Technical Director at OGF (or their successors) will keep a list
of assigned subnamespace identifiers and associated documentation at
<http://www.ogf.org/urn/> [URN-OGF].

The procedures regarding how to register a subnamespace identifier
are described in [GFD.191] and can also be found at the above
Website.

2.6. Identifier Uniqueness Considerations

Identifier uniqueness will be enforced by the Technical Director of
the Open Grid Forum.

The OGF Technical Director may sub-delegate part of the namespace to
third parties. It will not be permissible, neither by the OGF nor
any third party, to re-assign previously assigned URNs. A practical
consequence is that a previously assigned subnamespace cannot be
re-assigned, unless additional arrangements are made to prevent
identifier re-assignments.

2.7. Identifier Persistence Considerations

The Technical Director will only assign subnamespace identifiers for
persistent resources.

In order to enforce identifier persistence for individual resources,
each document defining subnamespace identifiers MUST contain a
section on the type of resource that is specified (e.g., whether a
URN in the subnamespace identifies a specific version of a resource,
the latest version of a resource, a specific manifestation, or a more
general concept).

The namespace identifier "ogf" MUST NOT change, even if the Open Grid
Forum changes its name or is disbanded.

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2.8. Process of Identifier Assignment

Assignment of subnamespace identifiers is limited to the OGF and
those authorities that are specifically designated by the OGF
Technical Director of the OGF. The OGF may assign portions of its
namespace (specifically, those under designated subnamespace
identifiers) for assignment by third parties.

The details of this process are specified in [GFD.191].

The syntax and semantics of each subnamespace MUST be defined by a
Grid Forum Document [GFD.1] before the corresponding SNID is
assigned.

2.9. Process of Identifier Resolution

The OGF namespace is not currently listed with a Resolution Discovery
System (RDS), but nothing about the namespace prohibits the future
definition of appropriate resolution methods or listing with an RDS.

The OGF will maintain an index of all subnamespace identifiers on its
Website <http://www.ogf.org/urn/>. This list may refer to known
Resolution Discovery Systems.

2.10. Rules for Lexical Equivalence

The <SNID> part of URNs in the OGF hierarchy is case insensitive.
Thus, the <SNID> MUST be case normalised before comparison.

The rules for lexical equivalence of the
<SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING> part of URNs in the OGF hierarchy is
specific for each SNID and MUST be defined when a SNID is assigned by
the OGF Technical Director. These definitions MUST include
information about case sensitivity, and in the case of %-escaped
octets, MUST define the exact normalisation to be used (e.g.,
interpret as octet, interpret as UTF-8, specify type of Unicode
normalisation factor, etc.).

2.11. Conformance with URN Syntax

The intention of this document is to only restrict the syntax of the
<SNID>. The syntax of the <SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING> follows the
general syntax of a URN:

SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING = 1*<URN chars>

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Documents defining a subnamespace identifier SHOULD specify further
syntactic restrictions in <SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING>. It is
RECOMMENDED that these documents forbid the assignment of URNs
containing characters in the <reserved> set ("%", "/", "?", and "#")
as defined in [RFC2141]. This is in accordance with Section 2.2 of
[RFC3986].

For forward compatibility, it is RECOMMENDED that software
implementations that don't validate subnamespace-specific strings
validate the syntax according to the generic rules for validating
URIs, as defined in [RFC3986]. URIs may contain all characters
defined in <URN chars>, including the characters in <reserved>
(albeit they have a special meaning), as well as the characters "&"
and "~".

2.12. Validation Mechanism

The validation mechanism of URNs in the OGF hierarchy is specific for
each SNID and SHOULD be defined when a SNID is assigned by the OGF
Technical Director.

URNs in the OGF hierarchy without an assigned SNID are considered to
be invalid.

2.13. Scope

Global URNs are relevant for the distributed computing community in
general, and the Open Grid Forum in particular.

3. Examples (Informative)

Since no subnamespace identifiers have been defined yet, no actual
examples can be given. Therefore, the following examples are not
guaranteed to be real or even syntactically correct.

Grid Forum Documents defining the "gfd" and "network" subnamespace
identifiers may give the following examples.

o urn:ogf:gfd:136

o urn:ogf:network:canarie.ca:kisti-uninett-glif-001

4. Namespace Considerations

The Open Grid Forum (OGF) is a standardisation development
organisation in the field of distributed computing.

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The use of the OGF hierarchy is expected to be broad, including but
not limited to usage for:

o Grid Forum Documents

o XML (Extensible Markup Language) Schemata

o RDF (Resource Description Framework) Schemata

The Open Grid Forum is dedicated to openly publishing all technical
documentation related to URNs in the OGF hierarchy and allowing
unlimited distribution of these documents.

5. Community Considerations

Members of the distributed computing community will benefit from
persistent and globally unique identifiers for use in protocols
developed by the Open Grid Forum.

Practical use of the urn:ogf namespace has been detected, and a
formal registration will allow the Open Grid Forum to document this
usage and enforce technical review of current practices.

6. Security Considerations

There are no additional security considerations other than those
normally associated with the use and resolution of URNs in general,
which are described in [RFC1737], [RFC2141], and [RFC3406].

It is recommended that implementers check the OGF registry and
documentation [URN-OGF] before assuming that a given identifier is
valid or has a certain meaning.

7. IANA Considerations

IANA has registered the "ogf" namespace identifier (NID) with a
reference to this document in the "Formal URN Namespaces"
sub-registry [RFC3406] of the "Uniform Resource Names (URN)
Namespaces" registry [URN-NAMESPACES].

8. Acknowledgements

The template and useful examples from [RFC3406] formed the basis for
this document. The authors would like to thank Joel Replogle and
Andre Mersky for setting up the urn:ogf subnamespace registry.
Jeroen van der Ham, Peter Saint-Andre, and Mykyta Yevstifeyev
proofread this document and provided valuable feedback.

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9. References

9.1. Normative References

[GFD.191] Dijkstra, F., Hughes-Jones, R., Newby, G., and J.
Replogle, "Procedure for Registration of Subnamespace
Identifiers in the URN:OGF Hierarchy", GFD 191,
December 2011, <http://www.ogf.org/documents/GFD.191.pdf>.

[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

[RFC2141] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.

[RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
RFC 3986, January 2005.

[RFC5234] Crocker, D., Ed., and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for
Syntax Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234,
January 2008.

9.2. Informative References

[GFD.1] Catlett, C., "GGF Document Series", GFD 1, April 2002,
<http://www.ogf.org/documents/GFD.1.pdf>.

[RFC1737] Sollins, K. and L. Masinter, "Functional Requirements for
Uniform Resource Names", RFC 1737, December 1994.

[RFC3406] Daigle, L., van Gulik, D., Iannella, R., and P. Faltstrom,
"Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespace Definition
Mechanisms", BCP 66, RFC 3406, October 2002.

[URN-NAMESPACES]
IANA, "Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespaces",
<http://www.iana.org/>.

[URN-OGF] Open Grid Forum, "URN:OGF Hierarchy Registry and
Documentation", <http://www.ogf.org/urn/>.

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Authors' Addresses

Freek Dijkstra
SARA
Science Park 121
Amsterdam 1098 XG
NL

EMail: [email protected]

Richard Hughes-Jones
DANTE
City House
126-130 Hills Road
Cambridge CB2 1PQ
UK

EMail: [email protected]

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